THE REACH OF WAR: ARMED GROUPS

THE REACH OF WAR: ARMED GROUPS; 9 Iraqi Militias Are Said to Approve a Deal to Disband

By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: June 8, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 7—
American and Iraqi officials said Monday that they had won commitments from nine of the country's largest militias to disband, but there were immediate indications that the agreement might be difficult to enforce.

A senior leader of one of the largest armed groups listed in the agreement said his militia, with tens of thousands of fighters, was not a party to it. And none of the fighters in any of the militias were required to lay down their personal weapons, officials said.

In addition, two of the largest armed groups operating inside the country were excluded from the agreement: the Mahdi Army, the militant Shiite group that American soldiers have been battling for weeks, and the Falluja Brigade, a force of ex-Republican Guard soldiers and anti-American insurgents cobbled together last month to take control there after the marines withdrew.

The deal, announced by the new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, is part of a process the officials here said would rid Iraq of any private armed groups by the end of next year. It followed weeks of negotiations with the leaders of nine of the largest militias, which together are thought to have more than 100,000 soldiers, nearly all operating outside government control.

Under the agreement, the militia leaders are said to have acceded to a timetable under which they will gradually transfer their soldiers to the Iraqi police, army and other security services. American officials said they would break up the command structure of the units by dispersing the fighters across different security units.

American and Iraqi officials said they were trying to demobilize a large number of the fighters. Under the plan, about 60 percent of the militia fighters would pass into other Iraqi security services like the army and the police. The rest would either retire and receive pensions as if they had been members of Iraq's regular army, join private security firms or be trained for new jobs.

All told, the program is estimated to cost $200 million.

Many Iraqis and Americans have long expressed fears that the militias, if left unchecked, could derail the elections scheduled for next year and lay the groundwork for ethnic or sectarian war. Nearly all of the major political parties that are expected to field candidates in elections next year deploy sizable militias.

American officials said they had secured agreements to disband from the nine largest armed groups, three of which, they said, held an overwhelming majority of fighters: the two Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdish Democratic Party, which together deploy about 75,000 fighters; and the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of a mainstream Shiite political party, which has about 15,000 fighters.

Six other groups in the agreement deploy smaller armies. Iraqi Hezbollah, the Iraqi Communist Party and the Iraqi Islamic Party are together thought to have about 12,000 fighters. Three groups -- Mr. Allawi's Iraqi National Accord; the Dawa Party, one of Iraq's largest Shiite groups; and the Iraqi National Congress, best known for its leader, Ahmad Chalabi -- have told the Americans that they have already disbanded their militias. Their claims could not be independently verified.

American and Iraqi officials said they intended to track each fighter's progress through the program. They also said they would require that every gun be registered with the authorities.

''I believe everyone has a true desire to end the issue of militias, and they feel the need to unify our forces for the next stage,'' said Hamid Majid Mousa, the general secretary of the Iraqi Communist Party, whose militia he said numbered ''a few thousand'' fighters.

But the agreement appeared to leave unanswered a number of questions. A senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which has a militia numbering in the tens of thousands, said his group had reached a separate understanding with American and Iraqi leaders that had little to do with the agreement to which that the P.U.K. had put its name.

Adel Murad, the P.U.K. leader, said his group had been assured earlier this year by American and Iraqi leaders that no efforts would be made to disband its militia forces. What to do with the Kurdish militias, the pesh merga, was one of the most contentious questions raised during the debate in March over the interim Iraqi constitution. The constitution said the pesh merga would be folded into the internal security services of the regional Kurdish government.

The Kurds, who have suffered brutal and persistent persecution at the hands of Baghdad governments for decades, are fearful of leaving themselves defenseless.

''The pesh merga are not included in this agreement,'' Mr. Murad said. ''That is for the other militias. No change. Nothing. We are like any army in the area.''

While American officials said they intended to disband the militias, they conceded that they did not intend to fully disarm them. Iraqi law allows each household to have a semiautomatic assault rifle.

Two American officials, who spoke to a group of reporters on the condition of anonymity, said they hoped to break the command structure of the various militias by dispersing their members among the various security forces like the border police, the army and the civil defense corps.

Still, the American officials conceded that breaking up the units was a difficult task, especially in northern Iraq, where the heavily Kurdish population has been fighting a guerrilla war for decades.

Indeed, in the Kurdish areas, where the integration process is under way, some pesh merga units have moved into the Iraqi security services with the same soldiers and the same commanders.

Even if Iraqi and American authorities succeed in breaking up the Kurdish units and moving their fighters into the security services, there will still be potentially unresolved questions of command and control. The interim Iraqi constitution places local services under the command of the Kurdish regional government, not the government in Baghdad.

The agreement announced Monday holds that any member of an illegal militia -- that is, one not included in the agreement -- is barred from legitimate political office for three years. That would seem to banish Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric who is the head of the Mahdi Army, which American forces have been battling in southern Iraq for more than two months.

Yet many Iraqi leaders and, recently, the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, have suggested that the violence in Iraq might be reduced if discontented Iraqis like Mr. Sadr were drawn into the political process. The American officials said Mr. Sadr was not asked to participate in the negotiations that led to the militia agreement.

For all of the talk on Monday of new beginnings, the reality on the streets seemed more or less unchanged. A senior commander of the Badr Brigade, Shaher Faisal al-Shaher, was found shot to death in his car on the side of a highway.

At the headquarters of the Badr Brigade, officials said they did not want to talk about the agreement to disband militias. Instead, they spent their time painting banners they intended to hang in Mr. Shaher's honor.

''The brave martyr General Shaher Faisal al-Shaher,'' one of the recently painted banners read, ''Betrayed by the criminal hand of the Baath Party.''

Photos: Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, center, announcing a deal to disband nine militias. With him, from left, were Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, Justice Minister Malik al-Hassan and Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib. (Photo by Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times); On their first day of training, recruits for the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps learned to stand in formation and march yesterday in Sadr City. (Photo by Michael Kamber for The New York Times)